Blog & Research

Blog & Research

Announcing OSAM Research Partners

By Patrick O'Shaughnessy, CFAMay 2018

Today we are announcing a new initiative: the OSAM Research Partners Program. Through the program, we will begin building formal relationships with the brightest and most curious people we can find to produce new research for the benefit of our investors and the broader community.

Each partner will gain access to OSAM's platform--including data and programming tools--and receive support from the OSAM research and technology teams, and from other research partners. The collaborative environment will allow those that had been working on ideas independently to work with like-minded researchers.

The more researchers we have working on the platform, the better return we expect to earn on our investments in data and technology. Each additional research partner—with their own interests, perspective, and skills—will make the program more valuable to the existing partners. This will lead to a deeper understanding of markets for us all.

Starting with a Bang

To kick things off, we are excited to name our first partner, who goes by the pseudonym “Jesse Livermore.” For now, he will remain anonymous. Jesse comes from a brainpower-intensive field outside of finance. He has studied (and applied) philosophy and physics. He is one of the sharpest minds we've ever come across. If you've read his research, you'll know what we mean. Despite his impressive intellect, he is both humble and kind. Jesse has been working with us for four months as part of the pilot program, and our collaboration thus far has made our team realize how powerful this initiative may become.

Until earlier this year, Jesse had to make do with publicly available data. No longer. His first paper, researched and written in partnership with Chris Meredith and Patrick O'Shaughnessy, will be released soon. You can follow our research and sign up here.

How it Works and Who is Next

Partners will contribute to both published research—through whitepapers and other formats--and proprietary research--to improve our existing strategies and develop new strategies. We will reward both based on merit and impact.

We will experiment with partners from inside and outside of finance. Some may devote a few hours of research a week, others may spend more. We will initiate new partners into the group one at a time, and communicate often, both digitally and in person when possible.

We are looking for more partners, and the application process is simple. Send your resume and a proposed research project—an explanation of something you'd want to explore on the platform—to rps@osam.com. Remote work is expected and fine.

We welcome candidates with any professional or educational background. Some additional points for application:

Must be passionate about investing and finding sources of excess return

What Partners Will Get: The Platform

We've spent 10 years developing the research platform. It includes data on publicly traded companies spanning decades and geographies, all scrubbed and carefully normalized. This includes financial statements, other data from companies, pricing, volume, trade impact, sector specific data, macroeconomic data, and more. As we grow the program, we will add more data sources. Partners will be granted access to a secured environment with programming tools for running standardized tests within the platform, allowing for fast exploration and results.

If you'd like to apply to become a partner, know that we will be selective, but that if accepted, we will provide ample resources to help you explore markets and investing strategies. Different partnerships will lead in different directions, to be determined. We will work with applicants to structure their program.

We can't wait to see where the program takes us and to share what we learn with you all.